


Bruises and Contusions

by rainbowthreads



Series: Perspective; Not Truth [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bruises, Developing Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Episode: s01e02 The Blind Banker, Gen, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Shippy Gen, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24082228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowthreads/pseuds/rainbowthreads
Summary: After The Blind Banker case closes, Sherlock notices the quite substantial bruising left on his neck. Unfortunately for him, so does John.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: Perspective; Not Truth [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/58077
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	Bruises and Contusions

**Author's Note:**

> I've put this as shippy gen and developing Sherlock/John because it's *meant* to be implying attraction, but at the same time, I guess it can also be read as gen? Read what you want from it, I guess. Enjoy!

Sherlock first noticed the bruises the morning after The Blind Banker case closed. He caught a glance of them on his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he got out of the shower and, after putting on his underwear, he stopped to examine them. A circle of marks around his neck, just beneath the skin, like tattoos, a fragmented band the colour of potassium permanganate that stood out dark and stark against his pale throat. A souvenir of his near strangulation in Soo Lin Yao’s flat.

He lifted his chin to examine them properly, from every angle he could, all the way around. They were just bruises. Nothing more than crushed capillaries leaking fluid into the surrounding tissue, causing pain and discolouration. Simple contusions. Nothing more.

But they fascinated him. Ever since his first bumped knee as a child, he’d been captivated by their inconsistencies, their mutability, their sensitivity. How they could match the shape of an injury or spread far beyond its bounds. The metamorphosis of healing, shifting through shades of gentian violet, duck-egg, sickly green, mustard yellow, the brown of old tea. The way they throbbed if you or somebody else dug their fingertips into the flesh.

He used to document them, when he was very young. Using swatches of paper and the widest selection of crayons he could get his hands on, he would chart the progress of their healing, illustrating size and colour as best he could. Then Mycroft stumbled over his archive and told him to stop it before Mummy found out and got upset.

And Sherlock stopped keeping his record, but he didn’t stop examining. Not until other things caught his attention, other obsessions, other areas of studies that pushed the thought of bruises to the back seat.

But now, standing in the bathroom of 221B, with such a beautiful necklace of marks, he could feel the passion coming back, the same curiosity, the desire to stare and examine and touch no matter how much it hurt.

He raised his hand and pressed two fingers into the dark spot above his pulse, wincing from the pressure on the damaged tissue. He could feel the blood throbbing through the artery beneath. His neck was whole. He was alive. Everything was fine.

Except he looked like the corpse of the hanged man he’d been experimenting on last week, so obviously so that even Anderson would notice. And nobody else would see them as a pleasant diversion, a trip down memory lane. Oh no. They would see it as an excuse to plague him with irrelevant questions, unbearable sympathies, detestable pity. Spare him that. They never meant a word of it.

He would hide them. Nobody need know. Not even John.

The bathroom door opened.

Sherlock whirled around to see John standing there in a t-shirt and boxers as though summoned by the thought of his name, hair ruffled from a bad night’s sleep, eyes half-shut.

“Sorry, I thought – what the hell?”

His eyes snapped open – in shock? Horror? Sherlock couldn’t tell. He tried to cover the marks with his hands but it was too little, far too late. John had seen.

He _knew_.

“Sherlock, are you...?" John let the question trail away and gestured to his own throat.

Sherlock swallowed hard. “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

Pushing past John, he marched into his room, slamming the door behind him, and dropped heavily onto the bed. So much for nobody knowing. Maybe he should crawl back into bed and stay there until everything had healed and this morning was nothing more than a distant memory. But he had a meeting with Lestrade in less than an hour – some boring paperwork, a formality to legalise his involvement – and if he didn’t show up, he would almost certainly be fetched instead by somebody too irritating to even contemplate. Probably Anderson.

At least John would still be in the bathroom when he left and would be in the surgery when he got back. He wouldn’t have to see that look again. He could tell so much about John from a glance – how he’d slept, when he last spoke to his sister, whether he’d changed his toothbrush – but he didn’t know what that wide-eyed stare meant and it sat poorly with him.

There would be no such look from Lestrade. Hiding the bruises from him would be child’s play. All Sherlock did was button his shirt all the way to the top.

When he left his room, the shower was still running. He didn’t see John.

The meeting was as boring as experience had taught Sherlock it would be. Who invented paperwork? And who decided it was he who should do it? Some phenomenal idiot, no doubt. He’d blame Anderson, but it was beyond his intellectual capabilities to do something so devious.

His mind was elsewhere, though. Even more so than it normally was when bored senseless. He barely spoke beyond the absolute necessary. But Lestrade didn’t comment. And if he’d noticed that Sherlock was dressed differently, he didn’t say. Then again, it wasn’t the sort of thing people like Lestrade would see.

He hated the way it felt to have the top button fastened, the stiff fabric clinging to his throat like it was trying to finish the job the would-be assassin had started, but it was better than people staring, people mocking, people _pitying_. Yet the discomfort was overwhelming. And every movement of his head pressed his collar into the flesh underneath, sending little twists of pain dancing across his consciousness, reminding him of what was underneath.

What did they look like now? The same as the morning? Darker? Larger?

John’s face floated in front of his mind’s eye. That expression. That inscrutable expression.

They finished shortly after noon and Sherlock was in a taxi within five minutes of Lestrade saying “We’re done”. A taxi that seemed to crawl like Sherlock’s mind when he hadn’t had a decent case in too long. But no – it was taking no longer than usual. It was frustration combined with the discomfort of his shirt. Nothing more.

Yet it was still a glorious relief when the cab pulled up outside 221B.

With barely a nod to Mrs Hudson, Sherlock stepped into the safe, lonely sanctuary of the living room, fingers already unhooking that damned button.

A polite cough.

Ah. Not alone, then.

John. Sat in his armchair. A small green and white carrier bag at his feet.

Sherlock hastily redid the button. “You should be at the surgery. Your patients will–“

“You’re my patient, Sherlock. Now sit down.”

There was a strange timbre to John’s voice, one Sherlock hadn’t heard before – a mix of firm authority and warmth that he almost obeyed without thinking. But no. This was ridiculous. He was _fine_.

“John, I’m _fine_ , will you stop–“

“Sit. Down.”

This time, he did. Begrudgingly, he dropped down into his own armchair with a huff, a strange heat twisting in the centre of his chest. The same heat he’d felt when Mycroft had found his old record charts and torn them up, that made him want to run away to somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t right here.

He opened his mouth to say something sarcastic and undoubtedly devastating, but before he could, John was in front of him, hands unfastening the buttons of his shirt, deft yet gentle enough that he barely felt the tug on his bruises.

“Now. Let’s have a look.”

He cupped Sherlock’s chin in one hand and lifted his head. Sherlock’s eyes closed, breathing slowing, heat rising up the back of his neck and into his face in what must have been a flush. He swallowed hard. John’s hands were cool, clinical, both the one under his jaw and the one assessing the dark chain across his skin, pressing just hard enough for Sherlock to suppress a hiss of pain.

“No long-lasting damage done, I’d say. You’re lucky.”

Sherlock tried to find a biting remark, but nothing came. His thoughts were empty, like a tornado had swirled through his mind palace, dragging everything out with its vortex and leaving behind only the messages of his immediate senses, like the way John’s thumb felt resting at the corner of his mouth – until it wasn’t. His eyes snapped open and he lowered his head to find John walking back across the room with his carrier bag. There was a box of arnica cream inside. Sherlock rolled his eyes.

“An old wives’ tale based on zero scientific evidence.”

John tipped the tube out of the cardboard and popped the seal. “Always worked for me. Now hold still.”

Sherlock’s eyes fluttered shut again as John’s hand returned to his chin, pushing his head back again, baring his neck. The coldness of the cream made his breath catch in his throat. And then John’s fingers started smoothing it in, stroking their way across the bruises and sending sparks of pain scattering across the floor of his empty mind palace like marbles, John’s touch so cool against the heat just below his skin that his fingers almost burned. Time ground to a stop along with his mind. There was nothing else.

Then it was over.

John dropped the tube of arnica into Sherlock’s lap and rubbed his hands on his trousers.

“Apply that three times a day. And if you have any other symptoms – anything at all – tell me, yeah?”

Words refused to work. Sherlock simply nodded. And with a single nod back, John headed back out the door. To work. Sherlock stayed where he was, his own fingers running over the bruises around his throat, tracing the ghosts of John’s. Worry. Concern. That was what he’d seen on John’s face that morning. Genuine concern.

John _cared_.

The next morning, the bruises had already started to fade. Sherlock didn’t even notice.


End file.
